Automatically crop & rotate scanned documents in Photoshop
Overview
Daniel Scott
Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
instructorI discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.
Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.
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All right, you've done a scan with your scanner. Old technology, when photographs only could be printed. Don't worry, it might be receipts. Anything that you've got a big group of, that you want to all crop and rotate into separate little groups. There's just one little button. I'll also show you how to remove the rounded corners that the 1980s loved so much. You can see, this corner's done, this one's not. Same with this, I did this side easily, quick, and left the rounded corners over this side to show you. Plus you get to meet my family, you didn't even ask, but you have zero choice if you want to learn the technique. All right, let's jump in.
From the '05 Cropping' folder, open up 'Crop and Rotate 1'. So this here is a scan, a bunch of images from me, as a kid, and my little brother, and I want to scan them all in bulk. I don't want to have to scan them individually. The trouble is, I've kind of done this on purpose to kind of rotate it around, so it's a little bit harder to crop. We want to let Photoshop do the little work. Now we're using photographs here, I do this also for receipts. I need to scan them and send them in, so I just put as many as I can fit. Like Tetris on to the scanner, scan them and hit the 'Auto Crop and Rotate'.
It's pretty easy, 'File', go to 'Automate'. And this one here, says ‘Crop and Straighten photos’. Kick back, relax. And you can see along the top, here's my original, and then there's these other tabs, all the images. Doesn't know which way is up, so we're going to have to go and rotate them. I'll show you a couple other little tricks, but that's the basics. Let's say this one here, that's me as a kid. Family history time, that's my mum and my little brother. That's me and my dad, and that's my little brother. That little bear there is now hanging above my son, Scott. Great, mom. All right, let's fix this one, my little brother.
So 'Image', 'Image Rotation', we're going to go 'Counter Clockwise'. Feel like me, you have to draw the clock in the sky, can never remember. But let's say these corners here. Up until now we've been using like the Lasso Tool. We're going to jump back to one of the tools we learned in the Essentials course. It's the Spot Healing Brush, it's this Band-Aid here. Now if you haven't used it for a while, it's a whole lot better, because it's using Content Aware. So basically we are using Content Aware Fill but more as a brush. It's going to be a bit easier. Pick a Brush size, that's kind of appropriate. And just paint out the edges. You can be quick and rough. 1980s, they loved the rounded corners. Pretty amazing, this, my Healing Brush. Awesome!
I'll show you another trick that I do. Let's say, not that one. This one here, didn't have rounded corners, but there's still just this weird trim around the outside. So I'll rotate it. Clockwise, clock in the sky. What we can do is a 'Select All'. So 'Ctrl A' on a PC, 'Command A' on a Mac, and then there's this option here that says, 'Select, Modify, and Contract'. I want to bring it in a bit. Now by default that's off. Because we're using the canvas bounds like the outside, it won't work unless we turn that on. So how far do I want to come in? I'm going to come in-- accidentally clicked well, that will do. Just so that I've got that kind of banding around the outside.
I'm going to invert the selection. 'Command-Shift-I', or 'Ctrl-Shift-I' on a PC, and then we fill it with Content Aware Fill. Now just so you know, I use it so often that I've added this shortcut. There was a shortcut on my Mac, I can't remember what it was, but if you look at yours, and you're on a Mac, problem is, that shortcut opens something like iTunes or something. So I've made my own by going down to 'Keyboard Shortcuts', because I use it so often. Go, click 'OK', I find that's an easy way to kind of get the edges. And if you're doing a lot of these, there could easily be an action. 'Select all', 'Contract', 10, 12 pixels. 'Fill', 'Content Aware', 'Save', 'Close'.
You can leave now because I'm just going to go down memory lane. Look at my dad. Oh man, he was young. He still has the mustache, and bits of his hair. More than me at least. That he did not pass on in his genes. Same thing here, probably just needs to come in just a tiny bit. The cool thing about it is, it will remember the last thing it did. You can turn it into slightly fast. I'm using shortcuts and stuff to impress you, and to show you that you can turn this into like a little production line.
Make sure you 'Invert Selection' first, otherwise, let's see what Content Aware Fill does. Totally go to the next video now, so inverting selection, I'm just finishing these off. It looks good, we've already done that one. That is my little big brother, he's younger than me, but he's about twice the size of me, better still as I am, but twice as broad. You do not need to know that one, but because you hung around to the end and got to know the family, I'm going to show you a little trick.
I'm going to go 'File', 'Close' because I've already done these scans and I don't need them again. Let's just say you've done it, and you're working on stuff, you just don't need a bunch of stuff that's open because you're messing around. I'll show you a cool little shortcut. So people don't know that you can go 'File', 'Close All', which is handy, you just want to get out, and I want to close all of these down. 'Apply to All', and hit 'Don't Save'. And just close them all in one big go.
Another little trick is, this only works on a Mac, I'm pretty sure. If I go 'Command W' to close, and instead of coming down here to Don't Save, I just hit 'Command', and whatever the first letter is, So if I go 'Command C' it will cancel, 'Command S' will save, 'Command' D', don't save. So is it a shortcut? If I'm doing shortcuts with a keyboard, both hands on it, I don't like to then grab my mouse and move it down, and click again. That could just be me. So 'Close', 'Don't Save', I'm just kind of-- 'Command W', 'Command D', 'Command W', 'Command D', So whatever the first letter is. Drop me a note in the comments, if there's a technique for doing PC as well, help PC people out. All right, on to the next video.